A Merry Little Dance
by Pantz
Summary: James Potter's laugh is poison.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: Everything from HP books belongs to JK Rowling**

**A Merry Little Dance**

He is laughing again.

The sound floats like a mist through the common room until it reaches her ears and she finds she can not concentrate on her work as his laugh contaminates Gryffindor Tower.

She closes her eyes and breathes, hoping to God that she is suppressing the laughter building inside of her and tries to focus on the work before her so that she is not lost completely within the sound.

James Potter's laugh is poison.

It is the very essence of passion and freedom and anarchy that makes people like him think that they are above people like her. It is the very sound that makes every person want to be his very best friend.

She hears a book slam and looks in front of her at her friend Marlene. Her eyebrows raise in question and Marlene merely shrugs before getting up and walking over to James Potter and his insufferable lackeys. She frowns in frustration as she hears Marlene giggle and tell Sirius that he was so silly. No doubt his arm is wound around her waist and her eyes avoiding his as she looks at James and laughs loudly at something he just said.

She hears Marlene add a bit of wit to his and the four boys banter with Marlene for those few moments before laughter once again fills the air.

She glares at her paper and forces herself to write the essay as another ripple of laughter flows through the common room. Her eyes close as she fights down the desire to join them, but her eyes still flicker over to where he is lounging with his friends looking so carefree she knows she must hate him. His tie is loose and his eyes are bright and when he walks he saunters as if he owns the world.

And sometimes she thinks that he does.

He catches her eye. Steals away a moment of control as she sucks in a breath and realizes she wants nothing more then to sit with them and show them that she, too, can be witty and amusing and so much fun. For a moment, she wants to pretend that she isn't a prefect and isn't in control and isn't so far away from their world, that she, too, could be wild.

Even thinking about it makes her want to laugh. She's forgotten what freedom was like.

The next time she looks up from her notes, he is sitting beside her. His hazel eyes are sparkling with amusement and a small smile plays on his lips. Her eyes narrow.

"What do you want, Potter?"

"Why Lily, be sweeter to me. You know you want to be sweet to me." He purrs at her and his eyes laugh more and she knows he gets too much fun out of mocking her. She thinks about glaring, but instead smiles prettily.

"Do I really?" She asks knowing she shouldn't want to, but realizing that playing his games is the only time during the day that she has any fun.

She really should stand up, smack him in the face, and walk to her dormitory before she forgets to hate him. She forgets that small detail too much for comfort.

He smiles, self-assured and breath-taking, and for a moment all rationale leaves her mind. He leans in close, so close she can smell the pumpkin juice on his breath and feel his lips as they whisper in her ear.

"You want to be very sweet to me," he says it quietly, almost so hushed it sounds like a whisper in a dream and she realizes that she would very much like to sweet to James Potter. She would very much like some of the glitter of his life to rub off on her own.

She turns her head slightly, mesmerized by the air of wildness and confidence that surrounds him. She is so close, their nose merely inches away and she realizes that up close his eyes hold none of the arrogance she would have thought they did. Up close, he looks normal.

"What would being sweet entail," she whispers as she drowns in his stare and even as she asked that question her eyes were half closed and his lips gently brushed hers.

It took a second for her mind to completely fly away.

And it took one more second in which his lips were no longer near her and amusement began shining in his eyes again that she realized this was not a game she should have played.

There was one more second when she realized, as she slapped him across the face, that she was more angry at herself then at him.

"You're such a prat," she snaps as she stands up and walks toward the dorm.

"Come on, Evans," he shouts, "I was only having some fun. Stop being such a little priss all the time."

She stops on the first step and swirls around so fast that her hair slips out of the messy bun and falls in scarlet waves down her shoulders.

"What did you say?" Anger flashes in her eyes and they shine a beautiful green for the first time all day. Her cheek tinge pink and her face is full of the life she only ever gets when she is about to fight with him.

"I said you're a boring twit who doesn't know how to live." Out of the corner of her eye she sees Marlene begin to stand up and walk towards her. She opens her mouth to fight him. To tell him it's not true, she can be as carefree as the next person. But her mouth closes and he smirks.

"See, even you know it." He saunters over to her a leans in so that he is as close to her face as he was moments before when uncharacteristic softness entered his eyes at the sight of her. "You're so busy pretending to be above everyone else that you don't even realize what a boring fool you are."

Any other day, she would have fought back, wounding him with her words as much as he hurt her. She would taunt his silly crush in his face, she would tell him what a bastard he is, she would tell him that no person could ever truly like him because of the monster he always seems to be. She would say all this, stare into his eyes, and feel beautiful and invincible.

Today, she merely steps away from him as memory of their brief intimate moment makes her hands shake. The brilliant green of her eyes die, her cheeks are pale and weak, and her mouth barely hiding the quiver of her lips.

"I hate you, so much." It was whispered, pitiful and helpless as he looked at her in surprise. He looked at her, and knew the fight inside of her had fled.

That, possibly, he killed what he thought could never die.

That night in her dorm, she looks in her mirror and thinks that she is so plain.

She has none of James' brightness, none of Marlene's sparkle,

And for the first time ever, she thinks that James Potter is right. She is a stupid fool.

Tears fall down her face as she realizes she cannot even recognize herself anymore.

What happened to her? What happened to Daddy's little inferno?

She thinks, quietly as she begins to get ready for bed, that she lost any sense of who she is.

She thinks, silently as she brushes her hair, that she wouldn't mind hiking her skirt up her thigh and unbuttoning the top of her shirt and show brazenly to the world that she cares not at all for them. She wants to dance in the rain and get drunk at Hogsmeade and for once in her life get a detention for blatant defiance of teachers because she forgot her mind in class.

She wants to stop thinking through every small detail of her life and just live. She wants to know what it feels like to be James Potter, to be alive.

The next morning, she wears a skirt that shows a tantalizing amount of her thigh and keeps her shirt buttons opened dangerously low. She lets her hair fall wildly down her back and her eyes sparkle of life, of beautiful revenge.

Today, she smiles, she will play a game of her own.

She walks down the stairs with Marlene and he sits on the couches, as usual, waiting for the rest of his friends to come down for breakfast. He looks at her and she realizes that even when he is tired, even when he is upset or angry, he still exudes his usual essence of independence and pride. No matter what, James could never shake off that sparkling imperfection that makes him such an extraordinary person to be around.

He stands up and saunters his way over to where she and Marlene stand. Her eyes flicker to him and her face takes on a regal countenance even as her stomach ties itself into knots and her brain freezes up.

By the time he reaches her, Marlene has strategically disappeared.

"Listen, Evans, about last night," he says even as his eyes take in her appearance and studies the new air surrounding her. "I'm… Are you okay?" He asks, even as he knows it is what she wanted him to say. Even as he knows, that today, Lily Evans will be the one to lead _him_ in their merry little dance.

She shoots him a look through her eyelashes and smiles playfully at him. Without a word she tugs on his shirt and pulls his head down to hers. She kisses him, hard and passionately and long and by the time she pushes him away her lips are swollen and he is breathless. By the time she pushes him away, Lily Evans feels like the most beautiful and desirable girl in the world all because of the way his eyes are taking her in.

He kisses her again. This time soft and whimsically as her hands find their way to his hair and his body presses her hard against the stair railing. Her eyes flutter shut and his hand holds onto her hips for dear life as a moan escapes his mouth into her own. This time it takes longer for him to pull away and when he does she knows her eyes are as hazy with desire as his own. She smiles wickedly at him.

"Never accuse me of not being sweet," she says as she pushes past him to where Marlene is standing by the portrait hole.

She walks away without a word, knowing he is watching her, knowing he is trying to figure her out. She smiles secretly looking back only once to see his eyes still on her and his mouth hanging slightly open.

For once in his life, James Potter is stunned into silence. She thinks this is how she likes him best, too shocked to remember that he's supposed to be unshockable.

End!

(yeah, I didn't like Glitter all that much so I wrote a new one based on it. Like it? I hope so. And I know, unshockable is not a word.)

REVIEW


	2. Chapter 2

The thing that many people overlook about James Potter is that fact that he is nothing more than a romantic.

If he lived centuries ago in the times of troubadours and lovely prose, James would have been that love sick fool standing in front of a lady speaking the most beautiful words she had ever heard.

His every sound would have been the very essence of poetry.

James, however, lives in the seventies with the birth of rock and roll and mindless diversions and temptations that have nothing to do with the mysteries of a woman's body.

In the seventies, there were many wondrous substances to occupy a young boy's time. He had no need to discover the fine art of words.

But really, how do you think James became the charmer he was without that innate sense of romanticism that lived inside of him?

And what other person could bring out the poetry within his heart then that girl with her shining green eyes who knew nothing of the beauty of life? Who, for all her morals and virtues, had forgotten the very meaning, the very purpose of being alive?

To James, she will always be some sort of a damsel in distress even as her eyes glare at him, her cheeks turn red, and her mouth scowls and he cannot get out the thought in his mind that she, her, she is so horribly beautiful. He will always try to rescue her from her greatest enemy, herself.

He fell in love when he was twelve years old and for a boy, a teenager, and even a man to give a woman that kind of unwavering fidelity even as nothing, not even a smile is given in return for years,

Well Lily Evans truly has to be a fool.

Then, aren't most people fools in love?

Foolish and blind and so quick to turn away from the one thing in they need because they cannot just reconcile to the fact that not every person fits into their stringent plan for what the world should be.

James Potter was supposed to be wild and arrogant and spiteful.

He was not supposed to be loyal and intense and so utterly beautiful to her.

He was not supposed to be perfect.

But he was and it was the moment she realized that, or possibly the slow realization that James is more of a stranger to her then she ever before thought, that she realized his world may be the exact essence she needs to save her own.

It's possible that she would never forgive him for that.

Sixth year was a year of moments.

A moment of him waving to her in the hall and her slightly smiling. A smile he would stare at and devour into his memory so that he could turn it over again and again in his mind later that night as he compares it to the golden hues of the sun or the red of the roses because even as he won't speak of beauty like that, he cannot but help to think it.

There were so few moments like those compared to the others. Slanted eyes, pouting mouth, harsh words that would have murdered him if he didn't know that it was their thing, their special thing that connected them and gave him a piece of her no one else has ever had.

And those fights, moments when he would tear her down only for the satisfaction of seeing her eyes bright and wit sharp, was his way of making Lily Evans his.

He realized long ago that he would rather have Lily hate him then not notice him at all.

What he never did realize is that he was an impossible boy to ignore.

And then, those moments that completed him and killed him became frequent as fifth year faded into sixth and she saw him, for the first time, as a boy and not as the opposition.

They were moments, so quick and ethereal that he wasn't sure they even existed, but moments when her eyes softened and desire flickered and her lips curled into something he believed was a smile.

But that was before she remembered herself.

She kissed him a week ago.

The night before he had destroyed the very thing he loved about her. He had destroyed her awkward sense of belonging that mingled with strength and gave her the stubborn pride she liked to ignore.

When he called her a boring priss, he didn't mean to win the fight. He didn't expect her to agree with him because she has never accepted defeat in her life before.

He always believed Lily Evans would fight him until the end.

"I hate you, so much."

She sounded pitiful when she said that. She sounded like a child just learning to believe that words cannot change her life and that the world, well it wasn't the place she had grown up believing in.

She sounded like she lost her way and James, _he_, was the one to take it from her.

That was when he decided their games have gone too far.

He sat up all night and thought about the tears Marlene shouted she was crying and remembered the dullness of her green eyes as she slowly turned away and he couldn't take it anymore.

Why is it that people hurt those they love most?

He didn't get a wink of sleep that night and the next morning, humbled, James was ready to lay himself at her feet and beg for forgiveness. Bent on one knee, her hand clasped into his, choice words flowing through his mouth as he made her realize that for everything he has done he does truly love her.

But she came down the stairs that morning bent on tormenting him.

Would it surprise you to know, that for all his charm and good looks, Lily Evans was only the second girl he has ever kissed?

In those few moments, Lily took possession of him, owned him, and she knew it. She had won. And he never lost a battle so gracefully.

And then everything changed.

"Hey Lils? Lils!"

She fixes him a pointed stare and frowns.

"Shh," she reprimands as she looks up at him. "Do you want to get into trouble?" One of her hands moves a scarlet wave out of her left eye as she looks back down at her History notes.

"Who, me?" he says smiling. "Never me. I'm not one for trouble."

"You're a magnet for it. Now be quiet or Madame Prince will kick us out."

He looks at her as she continues her essay listening to the scratching of the quill on the parchment. He watches every move she makes, entranced by even the smallest flicker of her eyes as they read a page of notes.

"Stop it." He laughs,

"Stop what?" She fixes him one of her prefect stares and he watches he cheeks turn rosy and knows her temper is rising.

"Stop staring at me."

"Now, now Lily, you didn't say please." Her head shakes, but a smile breaks through her lips as she rolls her eyes at him.

"James, get out of here. You're too much of a distraction." He reaches over and takes her quill right out of her hand.

"James!"

"Come to the lake with me."

"Go with Sirius." She says and makes a swift reach for that quill that he reaches well above her head.

"I'd much rather go with you."

"I don't give a bullock for what you want," and she jumps out of her seat and over James' lap for another go. Unfortunately for Lily, the quill is magically floated out of both their reaches.

She fell right into his lap.

How is it in even the most casual of circumstances she still ends up in the perfect position to be kissed by James Potter?

"Come with me," he whispers as he leans his forehead gently on hers.

"No," and her eyes flutter shut as he brings his lips to meet her own.

"Come with me," he whispers as he breaks away from her.

She answers with her eyes still closed, "okay."

At the lake, all the trees are occupied by the diligent students studying for upcoming exams. Lily, however, wasted no time in running to the water, taking off her shoes, and dangling her feet in the edge of the lake.

"You were right." She says looking at him as he sits next to her. She smiles.

"About what?" she looks at him, leans in, and give him a gentle lingering kiss.

"About everything."

END!

(yeah, ends abruptly but I don't care. I think explanation would ruin it.)


End file.
